


Maudra

by tofadeawayagain



Series: Maudra [2]
Category: Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal Series - J.M. Lee, The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Family, Genocide, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Near Death Experiences, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, References to Depression, Responsibility, Survivor Guilt, inherited trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26671624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofadeawayagain/pseuds/tofadeawayagain
Summary: The Crystal of Truth has been healed, but Thra is still broken. Kira and Jen search for other survivors, and are forced to face the possibility that they may be the only ones left. Kira must come to terms with the legacy she inherited and question what it means to be a Maudra in an empty world.
Relationships: Amri/Naia (Dark Crystal), Gurjin/Seladon (Dark Crystal), Jen/Kira (Dark Crystal)
Series: Maudra [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1979332
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	Maudra

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 Summary: Insomnia. A breakdown. Swimming, spelunking, and a dead end. Insomnia, again.
> 
> Warnings for: body horror (kind of), graphic depictions of death and decay, insect-like creatures, rot/decay in general, implied depression/PTSD, references to death/near death experiences, and trauma. Welcome to Chapter 1?

**Part 1**

* * *

_Oh, the torment bred in the race,  
the grinding scream of death and the stroke that hits the vein,  
the hemorrhage none can staunch,  
the grief, the curse no man can bear._

_But there is a cure in the house and not outside it, no,  
not from others but from them, their bloody strife.  
We sing to you, dark gods beneath the earth._

_Now, hear, you blissful powers underground —  
answer the call, send help.  
  
Bless the children, give them triumph now._

_-Aeschylus, The Orestia Trilogy: The Libation-Bearers_

_~_

_For the dead and the living, we must bear witness._

_-Elie Wiesel_

* * *

**_ Chapter 1 _ **

Kira sits at the mouth of the cave they’ve been sleeping in for the last three days and watches the rain. It’s heavy, and the roar of millions of droplets hitting the ground reminds her of the sound that filled her ears as her vision faded, right before she –

She shivers. Does her best not to think about it. About dying. About Mother Aughra’s stories. About any of it.

There are plenty of nights like this, nights where she can’t sleep. Nights where she feels too exposed and can’t relax enough to close her eyes, or where dreams of terror cause her to wake in a cold sweat. On nights like these, a part of her wishes she’d never found Jen in the forest that day, or that they’d never gone to the Castle. The time before was easy. Familiar. She doesn’t know how to live now. Doesn’t know how to walk without looking over her shoulder, or how to forget that there aren’t eyes watching all the time.

She hears rustling behind her but doesn’t bother to look back as she hears Jen approaching. He’d have never lasted without her back in the forest, she thinks. His footsteps are too heavy, too careless. Unburdened.

He places a hand on her shoulder and kneels next to her. “Kira,” he whispers, his voice raspy from sleep. “Have you slept at all?”

“A bit,” she lies. She doesn’t turn to meet his eyes, but she can feel the worry radiating off him. “The rain is loud,” she whispers. It’s a weak excuse, and she knows it.

He looks out at the torrent. “Yeah. It’s almost like Thra is trying to make up for lost time.”

Kira thinks he might be right about that. It’s never rained as much in all her life as it has since they healed the Crystal – enough rain to form a lake underneath the Castle, fed by the Black River, fuller and broader than she’d ever seen it. The whole forest is different – awake, alive.

The whole world is different.

“Did you have the dream again? About the lab?” he asks, hesitant, as if it may break her. She can’t blame him for thinking it might. Sometimes, she feels close to it.

She exhales and nods, glancing over at him. There’s something like pity in his deep blue eyes, and she hates seeing it there. She looks back out at the rain, instead. “It was different, this time. There were others,” she whispers. She doesn’t want to tell him about the screaming. He doesn’t need to hear that part. Besides, he already knows. He’s woken her up from enough nightmares. He saw the lab and the draining chairs back in the Castle. Saw the vial containing her shimmering blue essence, and the scars on her back. The cages and Gelfling-sized cells. He knows what happened to her, to their people.

He places his hand on her back, right between her wings, and she relaxes into his hold. Jen leans his forehead against hers, and she closes her eyes. Together, they are quiet. Kira concentrates on matching the cadence of his breath and on the sound of the rain.

The calm is broken when she starts shivering again, and he pulls back. Jen stands up, then reaches for her hand and tugs her gently to her feet before letting her go. “Come on. If the rain lets up in the morning, we can try that last pathway into the caves. We need to try and rest.” He can sleep anywhere, and she knows he’s saying this for her benefit. Still, her stomach sinks.

She’s not sure she even wants to try again. There’s no one here. She can feel it in her bones. All the other pathways in or out appear to have collapsed long ago, and Domrak is a tomb they should leave well alone. She can’t convince Jen of that, though. He’s too optimistic. He thinks it’s only a matter of time before they find more Gelfling tucked away somewhere, safe and alive.

There’s a burning hope in her chest, buried deep behind the memory of hundreds of vials on the wall of the Scientist’s lab, that he’s right.

She follows him back into the cave, toward the dying fire. Fizzgig is curled up as close to the flames as he can get without burning himself, and she smiles at the sight.

She doesn’t try to stop Jen as he drags her bedroll next to his. He does this every time she can’t sleep. It’s the only way she can get any rest. As he adjusts their blankets, she adds a few more logs to the fire. Kira watches the flames lick the sides of the fresh wood, growing stronger with each passing moment. Then, she picks up Fizzgig and cradles him. He’s so warm that she worries he might spontaneously combust if she doesn’t get him away from the flames.

She sets Fizzgig down near the bedrolls, but he rolls away to burrow in her pack for the night as soon as he catches sight of Jen. She hears Jen scoff. He and Fizzgig get along better these days, but she still wouldn’t say there’s any fondness between them.

Kira lowers herself to the ground next to him. Jen tucks the blankets in around her, taking extra care to make sure she is warm. “I can keep watch while you sleep if it’ll help,” he offers.

She tucks herself into his side and rests her head on his shoulder. He’s sturdy and steady, the way she thinks she used to be. “No, it’s okay. They’re gone. We’re safe.” She tries to believe her own words. “Let’s rest.”

* * *

The rain slows with the Great Sun dawn. Even so, she and Jen are soaked to the bone by the time they reach the place they are looking for.

She contemplates the narrow passage in the cliff-face that rises out of a pool of clear water, then glances up at Jen. The shocked look on his face makes her feel mischievous. “You didn’t mention there was water involved. I suppose it’s a good thing we’re already dripping,” she teases. Fizzgig grumbles from his place on her shoulder – he hates the wet.

Jen reaches up and scratches the back of his head uncomfortably. “I didn’t realize. I probably should have, based on the name, but-”

She kneels and sets Fizzgig down. The finicky creature rolls toward the edge of the cliff and hides under a rocky outcropping. She follows him to set her pack down, hoping at least some of the contents will stay dry. “The path has a name?”

Jen sets his pack next to hers, looking sheepish. “The map says it’s called the Tide Pass.” He walks toward the pool, avoiding her eyes and ignoring her laughter.

She watches as he inspects the pool and thinks about all the time he spends studying that map of his. He’d found it back in the library in the Castle, a musty place filled with scrolls and ledgers, and talked to Aughra about it. The old crone wasn’t much help, and Kira isn’t either. She knows the forest, but the rest of this land is just as foreign to her as it is to Jen. She can’t read the map even if she wanted to, so she rarely looks at it. Still, she notes, perhaps she should pay more attention in the future or ask Jen to teach her to read.

Kira removes the outer layers of her clothing. She nearly got stuck in the last passageway they tried because of her dress, and she doesn’t want to do that again. She sets her dress on a nearby rock, hoping that if the clouds disperse while they are exploring, the suns will dry the garment. She gathers the rest of her hair and uses a piece of leather to keep it tied securely away from her neck and shoulders.

She passes Jen on the shore and steps into the pool, closing her eyes as she settles into the water. She hadn’t wanted to try to enter the caves again, but the water provides some comfort. It’s refreshing and it reminds her of safety, of hours spent hiding from Garthim in the rivers and ponds of the forest. More distantly, it reminds her of the slight sting of saltwater along her neck and shoulders, sunlight glittering on waves, and of someone with a bright laugh and strong arms.

She walks out to the middle of the pool and submerges herself, swimming easily to the deepest point of the pool to investigate the crevasse which leads into the pass. She inhales deeply, enjoying the cool, crisp feeling of the water as it flows over her gills. There’s a current flowing from the pool and into the passageway, but it isn’t strong. She glances back at the shallow end of the pool, and she can see Jen walking forward into the water.

Kira enters the mouth of the crevasse and swims forward. The light doesn’t penetrate very far into the passageway, but there appears to be enough room for her and Jen to swim through without getting hopelessly stuck. She swims to the top of the passage and emerges into a few feet of cool, stagnant air.

There’s a soft blue glow emanating from moss growing along the ceiling of the cave. It looks soft and is close enough to touch, but she doesn’t reach for it. She knows better than to touch unfamiliar plants. Jen isn’t so careful – he tries to touch everything without thinking about it first. It’s gotten them into a few sticky situations so far. The glowing moss doesn’t look too dangerous, but she doesn’t want to test it. Still, she’s glad to see that this cave might be more visible than the others were – Jen might be able to see unreasonably well in the dark, but she’s spent much of their search of the Grottan mountains feeling completely blind. The water doesn’t scare her the way crawling along the earthen passages did, and with the potential source of light, she’s feeling much more optimistic about searching for a way into the Caves of Grot – even though she doesn’t think anyone will be there.

She waits for Jen to surface next to her, but when he doesn’t, she starts to worry. She takes one more glance around the cavern and dives deep again, swimming against the gentle current back to the main pool. The bottom of the cavern is filled with smooth, round stones. There’s no other sign of plant life among the rocks, and she wonders if the water level might rise and fall with the seasons, and if that’s the way this passageway got it’s name.

With a few kicks and a flutter of her wings, she’s back out in the main pool. Jen’s still standing at the edge of the deep water, and she swims toward him. As soon as she breaks the surface, she can sense that something is wrong. He’s still fully clothed and standing hip-deep in the water, looking frantic. His eyes are wide and wet, and he’s breathing like he just ran the length of the Dark Wood without stopping.

She scans the surrounding area for signs of danger, but finds none. “Jen, what’s wr-” He throws his arms around her and clings to her to her, nearly knocking them both over. Kira grabs at his upper arms to steady herself, still looking all around for whatever’s caused him to panic like this. It’s not like him to panic.

It’s not until she feels him cradling the back of her head, gentle and tender, whispering “you’re alive” over and over again, that she realizes why he’s so terrified. His whole body is shaking, and he holds her so tightly that it’s uncomfortable – just the way he did back in the Castle when she awoke to find herself in his arms, both of them sitting in a pool of her blood.

“It’s alright, Jen,” she whispers, turning them in the water and guiding him back toward the shallows. “Everything’s alright.”

“You went under and you never came back up,” he sobs, his voice cracking.

She feels terrible for scaring him even though she doesn’t understand why he’s so frightened. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you.” She should have. She knows he hates to be alone.

“I thought you must be down there drowning and all I could do was stand there while you died again, and-” Kira stops listening even though Jen keeps rambling on, still clinging to her.

They don’t talk about that. The dying. Not ever. But with the way he’s shaking, the way he can’t let her go – she thinks she needs to stop avoiding it.

They reach the water line, and she guides Jen back against the rocks that line the edges of the pool. Fizzgig rolls over to them and sniffs at Jen’s hair in concern. She brushes his wild hair back, out of his face, and notices that his neck looks exactly the same as it always does. Feeling chagrined, Kira flexes her wings gently enough to break his grip around her torso. She then leans forward and takes his hands in hers.

“First, I’m not going to die on you again. Not unless I have no other choice.” She’s firm. She knows it’s not exactly the best promise to make, but she means it. “Second – if I do die again, it’s definitely not going to be from drowning.” She points at her neck and shoulders where her gills are still open and visible.

He stares at her in confusion, then reaches up to gently prod at the smallest set of gills, just below her ears. “What happened? Did something bite you?” The feeling of someone touching her gills is strange, almost too intimate, but she doesn’t pull away.

Instead, she pulls him to his feet and starts climbing out of the water. “Let’s go find somewhere to talk, shall we?”

* * *

“Is this another “girl” thing?” Jen asks, sounding grumpy. They’re huddled under a rock outcropping a short distance from the pool, doing their best to stay out of the downpour. It’s not really working, though, and Jen looks even more miserable than Fizzgig. Kira glances up at him from under the hood of her cloak.

“I don’t think so.” She thinks again about that day in the sun, in another world, another time. “My father had them, too.” Kira holds her hand up toward Jen, and he hesitates before reaching up to accept the Dreamfast. She shows him a memory of the ocean. It’s more impressions than shapes – colors darting back and forth, castles of coral, glittering sand. The feeling of being thrown high into the air before safely landing in strong arms. The sound of her father’s laughter. The memory of gills hidden behind a cascade of braids. She pulls them out of the Dreamfast and pulls her hand back. “I guess I just assumed every Gelfling had them. Seems silly now, but…”

He’s silent for a long while, staring into the rain, but then he closes his eyes and leans back against the rock. “How old were you?”

“I’m not sure. Three or four, maybe.” She hasn’t thought about her family for many trine. Not since she’d given up asking for them every day and crying out for them at night.

Kira turns toward him watches as he sits there, eyes closed, curled into himself. There’s something quiet about him today, uncharacteristically so, and she feels a twinge of guilt. She notices that his legs, much longer than hers, aren’t entirely covered by the rock overhang.

Quietly, she removes her cloak and scoots toward him, draping the garment over their legs. Jen cracks an eye open and gives her a half-smile.

She returns it. “I’m sorry for scaring you,” she says again. She thinks if he’d gone off and made her think he was dead, she’d either be hysterical or furious. Jen just looks deflated, and it worries her.

“Just try not to make a habit of it,” he says lightly, even though there’s no humor in his eyes.

“I’ll do my best.”

He turns toward her and considers her for a moment. “Is there anything else you can do that might surprise me?” he asks, petulant.

She bites her lip to keep her smile from getting too large as she shakes her head. “Wings. Gills. That’s it. And the wings aren’t good for much, really. I can glide with them, and swim faster underwater, but I’ve never been able to do much else.”

“Well, it’s more than I can do. Gliding through the air is better than falling through it,” Jen sulks.

Kira thinks he’s terribly endearing when he’s cranky. “Well, you can read and I can’t,” she points out. “We’d never have figured out what to do with the shard, otherwise.”

He narrows his eyes at her, but she can see the beginnings of a grin on his lips. “You’re just saying that to make me feel less useless,” he accuses.

“Yes, well, it also happens to be true.” She smiles at him brightly.

Jen reaches over to pat Fizzgig on the head, ignoring the creature’s growling, and then pushes Kira’s cloak off his legs. “I don’t think this rain is going to let up, and there’s no point in hiking all the way back to the cave to dry off. We’re already soaked to the bone. Might as well give it a go.”

He holds up a hand to help her up, and she takes it.

* * *

Jen surfaces next to her in the glowing cavern, and she watches as he investigates the cave walls, ensuring he can get a good grip on them. He examines the glowing moss, but only briefly. For the first time, he doesn’t try to touch it – she wonders if it’s because he’s finally learned his lesson, or if he’s too nervous about being in a flooded cave to care about the local flora.

“I didn’t look any further than this, so I’m not sure what’s ahead. There might be more moss somewhere, but…”

“I don’t like this, Kira,” he admits, already nervous.

“I know.” She felt the same way in the other cave entrances. “Maybe the water doesn’t go the whole way,” she suggests, trying to be optimistic for him the way he’d been for her as they crawled through tiny passageways in the limestone.

He turns to face her, and she shrinks back. It’s the first time she’s ever been able to see his eyes in such weak light. She can barely see the sliver of blue that remains around his pupils, which are huge and dark as night.

“What?” he asks, alarmed at her reaction. “What is it?”

“Your eyes, Jen. They’re… they’re different.”

“Different, how?” he demands, sounding even more apprehensive now.

“I’ll Dreamfast and show you when we’re somewhere safer,” she tells him, firmly, because she can tell he’s starting to lose his nerve. “At least I finally know why you can see so well in the dark.” Kira swims close to him once again, and gently places a hand on his arm. “You’ll have to go in front of me. I’d lead the way, but I was blessed with gills instead of excellent cave vision.” She hopes the teasing will help ease his anxiety.

He looks toward the back of the cavern, which looks inky black to Kira. “The path gets pretty small up ahead.”

Kira nods. “I’ll hang onto your shoulder. If we need to go back, just push and I’ll swim us out. Try and signal what you need me to do if we can’t talk, okay?”

“Okay,” he breathes. “And if we don’t find any air pockets for me up ahead?”

“Then we turn back right away and call it off.” She thinks he’s pretty close to calling it off before they even get started.

Jen takes a few deep breaths, as if he’s savoring the air, and then starts toward the back of the cavern. “Alright. Let’s go.”

The cavern is small, so small that she has to tuck her wings tight against her back to avoid scraping them by accident. The water is deep, with a slight current around their feet, and they have to pull themselves along using the cave wall.

In some places, there’s ample room for them to breath and move. In others, there are only inches between the ceiling and their heads. She’s far less nervous at being restricted and blind than she was when they were crawling through the other caves, but she thinks that has something to do with her gills and having better air flow.

Jen, who doesn’t have that luxury, has to tilt his head back in order to breath. She feels him tense up and keeps her hand on his back – a signal that she’s there with him.

Several times, they pause in the areas where there’s more head room, allowing Jen to rest. After what feels like hours, Kira can suddenly see the outline of Jen’s head before hers. She assumes that they’ve found more glowing moss, but Jen moves forward into what appears to be a second large cavern, he automatically cries out and shields his face. Kira, alarmed, swims rapidly forward, flaring her wings as soon as she’s free from the tunnel.

She’s momentarily dazzled by an entirely unexpected shaft of light emanating from a huge opening in the ceiling. The air within the cavern is fresh, cold and carries the scent of fresh rain.

Kira swims below the opening and squints into the light. The shaft above is wide, and she can see jagged pieces of broken limestone and crystal protruding from the earth above. Judging by the light overhead, the gaping hole extends all the way to the surface. She wishes she could fly up and investigate the area, but if either she or Jen are to get there, they’ll have to go over the hills and mountains, on foot.

Kira looks down at the water beneath them. She can only faintly see the bottom of the cavern, but directly below the hole in the ceiling, there are several boulder-like shapes and sparkling crystalline tailings remaining from the collapse. The sight makes her feel unsettled – the water had allowed her to forget, for awhile, that they were deep underground, surrounded by structures that could collapse at any moment.

She glances back at Jen, who is still recovering from the assault of daylight. His eyes are adjusting, slowly, but still aren’t quite normal in appearance – the pupils are still overly large, though less exaggerated than they’d been without the presence of sunlight. He’s pinching the bridge of his nose, doing his best to avoid looking at the beam of light piercing the pool. “Are you alright?” she asks him, swimming out of the light and closer to him.

He doesn’t answer right away, blinking rapidly. “It’s very bright,” he finally says, “and my head feels like it’s being split open.” Jen turns away from the light completely, giving up on trying to adjust to it. “What happened? Are we outside?”

“The roof caved in,” she tells him. “All the way to the surface, it looks like.” They’ve encountered plenty of cave-ins since they started trying to find Domrak. Jen thinks the deepest portions of the cave entrances were collapsed on purpose, to keep the caves of Grot safe from the Skeksis. Kira isn’t sure if she agrees with him – but there’s something different about this collapse. It’s less clean, less strategic. “It’s not like the others.”

“What do you mean?”

She hesitates. “It’s not as big, for one. And there’s debris, but it’s not blocking anything.”

Jen’s got his eyes clamped shut, but his whole expression brightens. “We might actually be able to get through this time,” he says, and it’s so optimistic that she feels a pang in her chest.

“I don’t know, Jen. We shouldn’t get our hopes up. I can’t see any way out of here, except the way we came.”

“Come on, Kira!” His excitement is infectious. “There has to be an exit somewhere. I can feel the water moving down below. Can’t you?”

Kira pauses and closes her eyes, concentrating on the steady current under her feet. It’s moving toward the far wall. “Stay there,” she tells him. “I’m going under, I want to check if I can see anything.”

She sinks under the surface, using her wings to propel toward the middle of the water column. The cave is much deeper than she’d thought when looking from above. She can see the dark, shining shapes of the boulders below, but the details are blurred by shadow. The brilliance of the beam of light protruding from above makes the surrounding areas look even darker by comparison.

The water is crisp, fresh and clean, and the further down she goes, the stronger the current gets. She suspects that Jen is right, and that the exit they’ve been looking for is submerged deep along the far wall of the cave. Still, she can’t see it – it makes her feel useless.

She glances back at the stream of daylight behind her and considers it before swimming directly into it, near the surface. She experiments with her wings, twisting them into different positions until she is able to block out most of the light and shroud the bottom of the cavern in shadow.

As she breaks the surface, she hears Jen mumbling under his breath. It sounds something like “thank Thra,” and she feels momentarily amused.

“I think I figured out a way you can look around without being blinded,” she says, reaching for his arm to tug him away from the cave wall. Jen looks disgruntled at having to tread water blind, but he does it anyway. “I’m going to block the light with my wings, and then you’ll be able to look for wherever the cave leads next. I think there is one along the back wall, but I can’t see a thing in the dark. If it is there, it’s deep.”

“Okay,” he says, hesitant. “And if I find another pathway, what are we going to do? You can’t see anything, and I’ll need to find air somehow.”

“Well… I might have to go on alone and find air for you.”

He opens his eyes just a sliver to orient himself in the cave. “I don’t like that plan. What if you get lost?”

“Then I swim around until I find my way back,” she says, matter-of-fact.

“I really don’t like that plan,” he repeats.

“Well, let’s worry about that later. Let’s just see if there’s a way through, first,” she suggests. Jen considers her for a moment, then nods. She pulls him through the water and into the light beam. “Alright. I’m going under. When I’m in place, I’ll give your leg a tug, and you can swim down. I’ll stay here until you get back and have your eyes closed, okay?”

“Alright. Let’s hurry – even with my eyes closed, this light stings.”

She nods and slips under the surface again, quickly getting her wings into place. She tugs on his foot, and watches as he takes a huge gulp of air before diving beneath the surface. She can see him for only a moment as he dives down into the shadows, and then he’s gone from her view.

She stays in place, making sure to keep her wings steady so she doesn’t accidentally blind Jen while he’s deep under the water.

Then, so quickly that she doesn’t have time to prepare for it, he’s slamming into her torso from below, forcing her to the surface and back toward the place where they’d entered the cave.

As soon as her ears clear the water, she can hear him gasping for air as he pushes her backwards. “What was that for?” she asks indignantly.

“We have to get out of here,” he gasps, spluttering on the water as he frantically pushes her toward the passageway back to the outside world.

“Jen! What happened? What did you see?”

He doesn’t stop pushing her backwards until they are ensconced by the rock again, until he can feel the cave floor just beneath his feet and the water all the way up to his chin. They are far enough into the tunnel that she can still see him with the light from the cavern beyond, but only just. His eyes are open wide, and he’s shaking from head to foot. “Garthim.”

“Garthim? But – here? How? They’re dead, Jen. They’re all dead.” They saw plenty of them on the way into the Grottan mountains – just piles now, stinking and rotting under the suns. She remembers being angry that there was some sign of them left when they’d helped to erase so many.

“These ones aren’t,” he insists, still trying to push her further down the passage. “They were moving! We need to go.” She braces her feet against the cave wall and holds onto his shoulders to stop him from pushing them further away from the cavern, and suddenly he’s clinging to her just like he was earlier that afternoon.

Kira knows there’s no reason to be afraid this time. The Garthim could never withstand water. But he doesn’t know that.

She thinks of all the times he’s held her together when she’s woken up from the nightmares – the one where she’s strapped into that chair and she can feel the Crystal pulling, or the one he doesn’t know about where her lungs are on fire and she can’t feel her legs and the Skeksis are closing in on all sides. Thinks about what he does to pull her out of her panic, so patient each and every time.

Gently, she frames his face with her hands. “Jen, look at me. Okay?” He does, but he’s not all there yet, she can tell. He’s locked somewhere in his head. It must be like her secret nightmare, and it’s somewhere she can’t reach. “Jen, it’s alright. I’m here with you.” It’s something they still have to remind each other of, day after day, hour after hour. “They’re dead. The Skeksis are gone, the Crystal is healed.” She’s repeating his words, and she knows they aren’t quite right, but something in him shifts, comes back to the surface. His huge, dark eyes latch on to hers, and she nods. “Good. Keep looking at me.” She smiles, and he must be able to see it because he relaxes just a little bit more. “The Garthim back there are dead, I promise.”

“How do you know?” he whispers, about to go back into his panic. She holds him steady.

“That’s how I used to kill them, when they were after me. I’d get them to follow me into deep spots in the rivers or ponds. They can’t swim at all, and they’re too heavy to try and get out. They drown, Jen. They’re not like me, they don’t have gills,” she tries to joke. He exhales sharply, and it’s close enough to a laugh that she knows she’s getting somewhere. “Now tell me… could you see that light in their eyes?”

“Well – no, but…” Jen hesitates. “Their legs were moving.” He closes his eyes a moment, then releases his grip on her and leans his head back against the cave wall. “It must have been the current,” he sighs. He breathes deeply for a moment, then opens his eyes and catches her eye, looking guilty. “I’m sorry I slammed into you like that.”

He’s back with her now, completely, and she reaches to squeeze his hand. “It’s okay. You were scared.” He nods again, and holds her hand tight.

Kira thinks of the hole in the ceiling. The Garthim must have broken through the rock to enter this place.

It’s the most hopeful she’s felt in a long time. Jen must be right – there were other Gelfling here, once. How long ago? Could they still be here even now? Or had the Garthim done their job?

“We should go back,” she breathes, immediately starting back toward cavern.

“Why?” he asks, tugging on her hand to stop her. “The path forward is blocked. It’s no use.”

“Blocked? But then how is the water getting through?” He doesn’t answer, and Kira squeezes his hand again. “Jen?”

“A Garthim is in the way.”

She’s frozen for a moment. If she’s honest, even though they are certainly dead, she doesn’t like the idea of getting to close to the Garthim. Just the thought of it makes her stomach churn. Still – if the only way to investigate the caves is to go past them…

“Will you show me what you saw?” She hates requesting this of him, after the day he’s had, but it’s the only way. “I’ll go back and see if I can get past them. You can wait here. I just need to know what I’m looking for since I can’t see.”

Jen stiffens. “I don’t want you to go back alone.”

“True, but I also don’t think you want to come with me.” He’s silent, and she knows she’s got him.

“Kira, I-”

“We’ve gotten this far. And I’d have to go alone anyway to search for air, remember?” She holds her hand up in front of him.

“Fine.” He sounds frustrated, ashamed and scared, but also resigned.

He presses his hand against hers, and suddenly she’s in a dark room, surrounded by shapes. Shapes with glowing eyes. The image fades as quickly as it came, replaced by a flash of embarrassment, and then the image of her face as she sinks under the water. As the memory continues, she can see the cavern, as clear to his eyes as if it were high noon. There’s cuts in the rock from thousands of trine of changing water levels – some are low enough that a Gelfling could walk hip deep through the cavern, and still more crawl up the walls to the current waterline. The floor glitters with crystalline dust, and there, in the center of the cavern - three Garthim. One is face down, another on it’s back, and the third standing straight up like a statue of horror. The image changes.

Along the far wall, there’s a crevasse like the one back at the main pool. It’s low and wide, and it’s blocked by a Garthim, like a looming sentinel in the shadows.

Jen pulls his hand away, and the abrupt return to darkness leaves Kira feeling jarred. “You don’t have to go,” he says, decisively, as if it might change her mind.

“We came all this way. I’m going to try. I have to try.”

* * *

She follows the beam of light to the bottom of the cavern and looks down on the husks that remain. She’d thought they were boulders from above, but up close, she can see the segmented carapaces. She can see why Jen thought they were alive. The current pulls at their legs, and the movement is so familiar that it sends a shiver up her spine.

They aren’t alive, though. As she moves closer to them, floating in the water column just in front of the tallest of them, she can practically taste them on the water. Their decay is like a cloud around them – oily and gritty. She seals her gills against the intrusion, and holds her breath, moving as close as she dares.

She holds out a hand, fighting every instinct that tells her to run, and reaches toward the creature’s large claw. She fights the memory of a claw just like this one, reaching out and snatching –

She can’t think about that now, she reminds herself.

She touches the claw and instantly recoils. It’s covered in a slimy film, and it’s icy cold. She was expecting it to be harder, like metal, but it’s disturbingly soft. From just the barest pressure of her hand, it breaks away from the body of the creature and settles onto the cavern floor. She pushes away from the creatures with one great stroke of her wings, showering the husks with a cloud of crystalline cave dust.

With three more wing strokes, Kira breaks the surface. She takes a long, deep breath of the fresh air, relishing in the comfort that breathing the normal way provides, then reaches up to rub a hand over her sealed gills. It makes her feel cleaner, somehow. Feeling steadier, she glances at the passageway where Jen waits, hidden in shadow, before returning underwater.

She ventures into the darkness and stays at the top of the cavern until she locates the far wall of the cave. She’s nervous, but she’s also alone, and that gives her strength. She can’t fall to pieces if she’s alone. She’s lived her whole life this way, and the familiarity lends her some comfort. Still, she hates doing this blind.

She knows she’s getting close when she feels the oil and grit of decay like a fog against her neck. Sealing her gills once more, she floats down feet first until she finds what she was searching for – the Garthim’s shell. It’s a bit tougher than the claw, but not by much, and she feels nauseous. Kira orients her hands against the cave wall, and places her feet on either side of the Garthim’s head, anxiety filling every inch of her body.

With all her strength, she pushes at the Garthim, hoping with all her might that it will fall away as easily as the claw did.

It takes three attempts before she feels it move and her feet are no longer pressing into the too-soft shell. She can’t see what the result is, but she can feel a change. The current increases slightly, and the Garthim’s body seems to have slumped sideways. The water around her feels even slimier than before, and she resists the urge to rise to the surface again and get away from it. She’s already here, and there’s no reason to delay when she’s already got her bearings in the darkness.

Kira investigates the crevasse. She can still feel the Garthim just below. It’s still blocking a portion of the opening, but there’s enough room for her to slip through, so she does. She waits until she’s nearly out of breath to unseal her gills, expecting the water to be thick with the Garthim’s decay. Instead, the water is fresh and clear, and it makes her feel a little less anxious to be able to breathe freely.

The tunnel is long and shallow enough for her to feel both the floor and ceiling at once. She tucks her wings close to her body and pulls herself along using the walls. She hates this tunnel nearly as much as she hated the others above ground, but still she presses on, searching for an air pocket.

Finally, the current slows, and she thinks she may be reaching the end of the tunnel when it happens. The water around her suddenly feels putrid, greasy, and thick – like the water around the Garthim husks, but much, much worse.

She could smell death back at the Castle. She can taste death here.

She turns quickly and pulls herself back into the current and the clean, fresh water, but she no matter what she does, she can’t rid her gills of that feeling, can’t clear her mouth of the taste. It’s omnipresent, the only thing she can concentrate on in this black hole, this place where she is deprived of her other senses.

She can’t fall to pieces if she’s alone. She can’t fall to pieces if she’s alone. She can’t –

Kira barely holds herself together as she crawls back along the tunnel, desperate for light and sound and something other than the taste of the dead in her mouth.

When she finally slams headfirst into the Garthim’s crumbling shell, she doesn’t have the space left to be horrified or revolted. She’s only grateful to be free of the tomb that should have remained sealed.

She swims rapidly toward the beam of light in the center of the cavern and floats inside of it, feverishly scrubbing at her gills until they feel raw. She takes in fresh water over and over again. She knows the taste isn’t still on her tongue, but the memory of it is, and she wants to get rid of it, wishes she’d never known it, wishes she’d just listened to Jen and gone back…

Jen.

She’s not alone anymore. She can’t fall to pieces in front of him; he’s already in pieces. If she falls, how will they put themselves back together?

She screams underwater so he can’t hear her.

* * *

When she finally surfaces and joins him in the tunnel, her voice is colorless, raspy and broken.

“I want to go back.”

Unlike the last time she spoke those words to him, he listens.

* * *

Kira wakes suddenly, startled out of hazy nightmares by a log popping in the fire. The fresh horrors from the afternoon and those from trine past keep interrupting her sleep, and she’s so tired that she thinks she must be just like Mother Aughra – old, wasted, going mad. She watches the flames dance, quickened by the red-hot embers below, and focuses on keeping her memories where they belong.

Once she feels steady again, she slips out of her blankets to put more logs on the fire. The storm has finally cleared, but the open air has turned bitterly cold.

She pauses in her task as she realizes she’s alone. Jen’s blankets are untouched, and Fizzgig isn’t in the little bed she made for him a safe distance from the flames.

She looks past the fire toward the mouth of the cave and spots him. He’s sitting in her usual spot, staring out at the night sky. His _firca_ lies forgotten by his side, and he’s got Fizzgig lying in his lap, fast asleep.

Kira retrieves his blanket from his bed, and pads over to him on silent feet.

He jumps when she places a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I should make more noise.”

He shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the sky above. “It’s alright.”

The light of the Sisters on the lake far below is soft and soothing. She wonders how the world can be so lovely and so terrible all at once, then pushes the thought away. Jen’s shivering in his light tunic. He’s right here, he’s right now, and he’s more important than all the rest.

She wraps the blanket around him, careful to avoid waking Fizzgig as she does so.

“I should have gone with you.” He sounds so angry at himself, more frustrated than she’s ever heard him. He holds his hand up, a silent offering. She’s not sure what he wants to show her, but she takes it anyway.

As soon as she touches her hand to his, she’s back in the darkness, surrounded by glowing eyes. This time, though, she can hear the clicking pincers, the skittering legs on a stone floor, and she feels his terror at being surrounded by dozens of the monolithic beasts. It’s an explanation, an apology, and she understands why he couldn’t face them now.

The scene clears, and he waits for her to share something. He’s been very patient, and hasn’t pressed her for answers all afternoon. Not while she beat her underthings clean against the rocks of the main pool, not when he saw her raw, bleeding gills under the light of day… not even when she emptied her stomach again and again as they returned to their cave.

She thinks about that pocket of still water – is glad he wasn’t there to see it. She didn’t have to see it to know what she’d stumbled into. Kira won’t share this with him. She won’t let him share this weight.

He pulls his hand away and offers her a corner of the blanket, instead. She curls into his side, and they sit there, staring at the stars, offering one another what comfort they can.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of a multi-chapter fic. I think it's safe to say that this is going to be one of the most graphic chapters (had to hit the ground running, I suppose). There will be a whole lot of sad Kira and Jen for a bit, and then a whole lot of hope. I hope you stay tuned through the angst.
> 
> Thanks to my fandom friends, especially orange_yarn, for encouraging me to do this! Also, thanks to beingheretoo for the idea of doing a short chapter summary for each installment.
> 
> I haven't been so inspired to write in a very long time, so - hope you all enjoy. Thanks for reading, and hoping to hear from you!


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